This is Argyn's blog. I comment on topics of my interests such as software, math, finance, and music. Also, I write about local events in Northern Virginia, USA and all things related to Kazakhstan

Friday, March 25, 2005

How Did You Do?

This article is about job market in US.

After three long years, the job market at last seems to be reviving. The economy created 2.2 million jobs in 2004—too few to replace the 2.4 million lost from 2001 through 2003 but a big step in the right direction. There was other good economic news too: The U.S. enjoyed high productivity, stellar corporate profits, low interest rates, and relatively low inflation despite a big jump in oil prices.


Also, Parade magazine has a salary survey every year. This year it was in March 13, 2005 issue. They put pictures and brief descriptions of occupation with anuual income of people from all over US. It's an interesting roundup. It gives an idea of what is "average" income in US.

Monday, March 21, 2005

List of ideologically harmful performers

This is too funny. I don't know how long this image is going to be posted on the source web site, but I couldn't resist linking to it here.





This is dated Jan 10, 1985, and is supposed to be a list of banned performers for communist censors in the Soviet Union. I'll list some of them in English here:

  • Sex Pistols
  • Kiss
  • Iron Maiden
  • Judast Priest
  • AC/DC
  • Black Sabbath
  • Alice Cooper
  • Nazareth
  • Scorpions
  • Pink Floyd
  • Donna Summer
  • Tina Turner
  • Ramones
  • Blondie


While I could understand reasoning behind banning Sex Pistols, Kiss or Black Sabbath, after all I believe that they are banned in Walmart too, I don't get Donna Summer. Kiss had "ss" looking like Nazi's SS symbol, that alone would have been enough to ban them. It's real funny to look at this list now.

Campaign Finance in American Politics

CampaignMoney.com is a unique website that lets you see for yourself the hidden world of American political campaigns. Money and lots of it is the mother's milk of politics. The Presidential campaigns of Bush and Kerry are no different from any other campaigns--they need money. CampaignMoney.com is your door key to inside politics, American politics. Incidentally, you can check on people you know to see if and how they help finance these campaigns.
What you learn may surprise you!


I was surprised! :)

Some more politics, sorry: National Democratic Institute.

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) is a nonprofit organization working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide. Calling on a global network of volunteer experts, NDI provides practical assistance to civic and political leaders advancing democratic values, practices and institutions. NDI works with democrats in every region of the world to build political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and to promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.


As I understand, they support opposition in former soviet states, such as Kyrgyzstan, for example.

Slide Guitar For Beginners

Lots of tips to play a guitar with a slide for beginners.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Real Estate: Avoid the Burn by Amey Stone in New York

It's a very useful article for those who are about to buy a house. I know quite a few people who buy houses for investment purposes. They dump all their money into real estate. I think it's not a right strategy.

First, realize that you may be getting in late. "The best real estate investing was done three to five years ago," says Geordie Crossan, a financial planner in Westlake Village, Calif. When it comes to the purchase of a second home, he advises clients to consider whether they're already overexposed to real estate in their portfolios -- much the way investors were overexposed to tech stocks in 1999. "If your real estate holdings are more than 75% of your total equity, you need to look at building up some other assets," he says.

"NOT AN IDEAL STRATEGY." More second-home buyers today are blurring the lines between vacation and rental properties, justifying the purchase by planning to rent it out and figuring it's sure to appreciate. But if you're really looking for an investment property, do the math. Rental income minus expenses should produce a positive cash flow, says Gayle Henderson, an agent with RE/MAX Excaliber in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Some buyers are willing to live with a shortfall if they think prices will appreciate rapidly, but that's not an ideal strategy," she says.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Ant HTTP Post task

Usefull task to post from Ant. It's a part of Antelope ANT GUI tool.

I'm trying to figure out how to use Ant Get task to retrieve a page, which requires FORM-based authentication.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Overview of the Consulting Market in Kazakhstan

By Svetlana Voronina, BISNIS Representative
Astana, Kazakhstan
September 2004

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 2004. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES.

Another fact reflecting the high potential of this market is the recent entry of some top Russian IT companies into the market

Based on their estimates the best prospects in IT consulting market include system integration, business management and project solutions consulting with particular focus on business consulting combined with IT consulting services. They say that software products of local and international origin are largely represented in local market, while their implementation and adjustment often leads to poor results if a business-user does not combine it with business consulting. Research by Russian IT companies show that Kazakhstani market has reached a stage of maturity when it is ready to purchase software and business services as a whole.


List of large IT-consulting companies of Kazakhstan

Actis Systems Asia www.actis.kz
Almaty IT www.kz.it.ru
Alsi www.alsi.kz
Asia-Soft www.asia-soft.kz
BIPS www.bips.kz
Force Technology www.ft.kz
Galktika Kazakhstan www.galaktika.kz
Glotur www.glotur.kz
Intel Soft Kazakhstan www.intelsoft.kz
Logycom www.logycom.kz
Real Soft www.realsoft.kz
Transworks Ltd. www.transworks.kz
TerraLink www.terralink.kz

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Win Xp System Tweaks, More performance for you! (AUDIO)

Tweaks to improve audio performance.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

NTFS RPMs for Fedora & RedHat

I'm about to add new "old" drive with NTFS on it to my FC3 file-server.

The Nomad (2004)

Apparently, this movie is almost ready. I didn't expect it. As far as I know it's based on one of the most popular Kazakh books called Nomads.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Birthday party turns bloody when chimps attack

The Davises were at Animal Haven Ranch, in a canyon 30 miles east of Bakersfield, to celebrate the birthday of Moe, a 39-year-old chimpanzee who was taken from their suburban Los Angeles home in 1999 after biting off part of a woman's finger.

The couple had brought Moe a cake and were standing outside his cage when Buddy and Ollie, two of the four chimpanzees in the adjoining cage, attacked St. James Davis, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game. Moe was not involved in the attack.

Dr. Maureen Martin of Kern Medical Center told KGET-TV of Bakersfield that the monkeys chewed most of Davis' face off and that he would require extensive surgery in an attempt to reattach his nose. Chealander told The Bakersfield Californian that the chimps also tore off Davis' testicles and foot.


I don't understand people who own large animals at home. It's abnormal.

Dell PowerEdge 1600SC FAQ

DV Lottery Instructions 2006

ENTRIES FOR THE DV-2006 DIVERSITY VISA LOTTERY MUST BE SUBMITTED ELECTRONICALLY BETWEEN FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2004 AND FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 2005. APPLICANTS MAY ACCESS THE ELECTRONIC DIVERSITY VISA ENTRY FORM AT 'WWW.DVLOTTERY.STATE.GOV' DURING THE REGISTRATION PERIOD BEGINNING NOON NOVEMBER5. PAPER ENTRIES WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. APPLICANTS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST WEEK OF THE REGISTRATION PERIOD TO ENTER. HEAVY DEMAND MAY RESULT IN DELAYS. NO ENTRIES WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER NOON ON JANUARY 7, 2005.

I met a lot of people here, who actually won a green card. Or at least, they claim they won :)

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Technopark in Almaty

Implanted on 340 hectares near the country's financial capital city of Almaty, the Alatau IT Park will be operational as of next June, according to Mr. Baurjan Abdrafilov, the Park's director. This site is the first of the IT Parks that Kazakhstan will develop over the next 10 years.

Essentially dedicated to IT and telecommunication technology, Alatau's IT Park has interested western High Tech corporations: there are over 30 corporations planning on installing a site in the park since its creation in June 2004. To date, such firms as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, Sun Microsystems and Thales have already signed the necessary protocols with the ETTC (Engineering & Technology Transfer Center), the Park's operator, for implantation.


I doubted it would ever work out, but will be happy if I were wrong. Once, I wrote an article on the subject in www.dn.kz newspaper arguing for creation of such a park in Alatu.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

India Call Centers Suffer Storm of 4-Letter Words

" 'You Indians suck!' an American screamed on the phone," recalled a soft-spoken Manzoor, 25. "He was using a lot of four-letter words, too. He called me names left, right and center."

Call center executives and industry experts say abusive hate calls are commonplace, as resentment swells over the loss of American jobs to India. According to a survey in November 2004 by an Indian information technology magazine called Dataquest, about 25 percent of call center agents identified such calls as the main reason for workplace stress.


By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, February 27, 2005; Page A22

I haven't ever heard of this before. It's true that many (all?) call centers are in India now. The results are mixed. I used to be dissatisfied with Dell's Indian support stuff, but recently one guy helped me resolve a problem with Dell laptop quickly. I was pleased. On the other hand, Sprint's american support was terrible. It was the main reason of my switching to AT&T Wireless.

Dynamic DNS Service

One more dynamic DNS http://www.no-ip.org/.

Nikolai uses Zoneedit.

Gentoo sucks

I got an old Pentium III computer from my friend, who's moving back to his country. After a lot of soul searching, I decided to try Gentoo Linux to to setup a file server for home network.

Man, what a piece of crap this Gentoo is! It downloads all sources from Internet, and compiles them at your computer. The idea is that it can build the most optimal configuration for you. There's an installation manual of tens of pages. You have to manually follow all steps. It's easy to miss a step, certainly. I tried to do every step as accurately as possible, given that it took me many many hours. I started with Knoppix CD to boot.

After all this trouble, when I boot a computer the HDD wasn't mounted. Ok, I logged on. I don't recommend this thing even to hobbyist. Maybe for graduate students only, to learn concepts of this sort of Linux.

Yesterday, I installed Fedora Core 3 on the same machine. Boy, what a difference! It was also slow, suprisingly. I remember the RedHat 8 was quite fast. Still, FC3 didn't require endless re-boots like Windows or manual process like Gentoo.

I chose GNOME over KDE, and it was a mistake. GNOME didn't render screens properly, they were not refreshed at all. So, I dumped GNOME, and installed KDE. Now, Firefox didn't have Java plugin. It's strange because Java 1.5 was installed. Not a big deal, I configured it manually and it works fine. This a mature product unlike Gentoo.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Struts Tips

The list of tips from Ted Husted. This guy knows everything about Struts. I used some of his tips, btw.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

SLATEC

After a few days of research, I came to a conclusion that there's no free numerical algorithms library for Java comparable to CERNLIB. It seems that the only good commercial library is JMSL from Visual Numerics. There's also a book, which I mentioned in the earlier post, but its source codes are not free. Its source codes were probably automatically converted either from the previous convertion from Algol to C, or directly from Algol. I don't know how good is this library, it wasn't used extensively indeed.

On the other hand, there are several public domain and free libraries in Fortran and C/C++. GNU GSL is a good one, but it's derived from other pubic domain software. Maybe the best way to build Java library is to port directly from original libraries. So far, I see two best candidates: CERNLIB and SLATEC. It seems that CERNLIB is GPL and SLATEC is public domain. Also, NUMAL is public domain, but I couldn't get its sources anywhere. NUMAL is in Algol 60 and last updated in 1980, while SLATEC in Fortran was updated in 1993. I don't know about CERNLIB, but I guess it had to be updated in 1990s.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Skype is free Internet telephony

An Overview of Mathematical Software

This from the book:

Numerical Analysis:
Mathematics of Scientific Computing, 3rd Edition

David Kincaid & Ward Cheney
Brooks/Cole Publ. Co., 2002, ISBN 0-534-38905-8

See also
The Numerical Analysis FAQ

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

JSR Update: A Web Services and XML Special Round-Up

From the Java Community Process Program - A Look at the Key JSRs From Among the 20 Or So That Offer Benefits for Web Services

Recently, I've been frustrated reading Java articles in various magazines. Almost all of them were useless, sometimes entire journal was full of crap. So, I wasn't expecting anything interesting in JDJ, but this issue had a couple of interesting articles. This one gives a list of all web-services related JSRs, quite usefull.

Started reading Hull's book

So far so good. I like it. It starts with introduction to derivatives, and doesn't require any economis or finance. Not much of math in first chapters. We'll see what's going to happen after chapter 5.

On the other hand, the book Bernt Odegaard's book wasn't suitable for me. It's for those who know derivatives and only need to write programs to implement computations. There's a little more math background in some chapters, but overall it's just implementation of formulas in C++.
Also, the author implements all numerical algorithmsc in his C++ programs. For example, to find out internal interest rate, one has to find a root of a non-linear equation. This book's C++ code actually implements root-finding algorithm, which is a little strange to me. I would use one of the available math packages, such as GSL. It's ot because I'm too lazy (which is true). The reason is that math algorithms tend to be tricky in implementaion, so it makes a lot of sense to use a proved one instead of coding it yourself. When I programmed numerical computations I implemented my own versions of well known algorithms only if I had to tweak them somehow.

800 in Quatitative skills in GRE General

I got 800 in quantitative skills score of GRE General test! It's 100%. Huh, as if I expected anything else. It would be a shame to get less. All questions are EASY. Some of them are lengthy and weirdly formulated. Also, I had to learn the definitions and notaion in English, because I studied in Russian.

On the other hand there's not much to be proud of in other sections :) Ok, they weren't bad, they were average for an american college grad. I was afraid I'd get below 50% percentile. It didn't happen. Such a relief!

Saturday, February 19, 2005

NUMERICAL SOFTWARE TOOLS AND INFORMATION SOURCES

A Numerical Library in Java for Scientists and Engineers

I'm looking for Java sources of a good numerical library. This book is supposed to have them. It should have Java implementation of NUMAL (Algol library) with sources. I don't know what's the license, I doubt it's anything like GPL.

Unfortunately, the porblem with new things is that they are not tested thoroughly. It's especially important in math libraries, that they were tested by many people. I deally, I'd love to gave GPL's CERNLib or BESMLib in Java.

GSL - GNU Scientific Library is in C/C++. It may be easier to convert to Java.


Also, I found out that Numerical Recipes is available on-line. It's a surprise.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Staff Favorite Alternative Tech Blogs

Somehow, my blog got into the list of staff favorite blogs on Network Computing.

Huh... that's interesting. It will keep me motivated. Thanks, my friends :)

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Financial Numerical Recipes in C++

Bernt Arne Ødegaard rules! He's writing a book on Financial Algorithms and keeps it free for download.


John Hull wrote book Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (5th ed), which seems to be a common reference in its field, but he doesn't offer it for free, unfortunately.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Internet Tutors from India Aid U.S. Kids with Math

It's a new form of outsourcing: teachers in India are tutoring American children in math over the Internet. The Delhi-based company Career Launcher is one example: It contracts with a U.S. company to provide extra tutoring. The market has expanded since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Two Indian companies mentioned are Career Launcher and Educomp Datamatix. Unfortunately, they didn't name the american company which proxies these companies. I'm not sure how an individual would buy services from Indian companies.

Ministry of education and science of Kazakhstan

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Refresh WebLogic Conncetion Pool after changing permissions in DB

If you change permissions in the DB for the user id, which is used in the WebLogic connection pool, then it won't be reflected immidiately, because a pool would be using existing connections. You have to refresh a connection pool. You can do it by logging on to Console, then navigate to connection pool settings. "Reset" butt will be somewhere in "Control" tab window.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Saturday, January 29, 2005

DC SOCIAL INSIDER

DC Social Insider is Washington DC's premier social and networking group in the greater metropolitan area. Whether it's a ball, gala, party, club, embassy event, nightlife, celebrity event or entertainment related, we have it.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Fundamental Concepts of mathematical finance

If you have done a numerical degree such as engineering or mathematics/physics and are new to mathematical finance, fear not! This section contains some easy-to-digest introductory articles written exactly for people like you.



One more link to http://www.studyfinance.com/

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

ClearCase: The ten best scripts

add-to-src-control.bat:

@rem= 'PERL for Windows NT -- ccperl must be in search path
@echo off
ccperl %0 %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
goto endofperl
@rem ';
###########################################
# Begin of Perl section
$start_dir = $ARGV[0];
#
# Fixed variable
#
$S = "\\";
$list_file = "c:".$S."list_file";
$list_add = "c:".$S."list_add";
$choosed = "c:".$S."choosed";
sub clean_file
{
$status = system("del $list_file > NUL 2> NUL");
$status = system("del $list_add > NUL 2> NUL");
$status = system("del $choosed > NUL 2> NUL");
}
#
# Start of the script...
#
printf("add-to-src-control $start_dir...\n");
clean_file();
$status = system("cleartool ls -view_only -r -s $start_dir > $list_file");
open(LIST_ELEMENT,$list_file);
while ($element=)
{
chop $element;
# printf " Processing $element ";
if ($element =~ /CHECKEDOUT/)
{
# printf(" checkedout file \n");
}
else
{
# printf " view private \n";
printf " Processing $element ...\n";
#
# For files with spaces...
#
if ($element =~ / /)
{
$status = system("cmd /c echo \"$element\" >> $list_add");
}
else
{
$status = system("cmd /c echo $element >> $list_add");
}
}
}
close(LIST_ELEMENT);
if (-e $list_add)
{
$listelement = `type $list_add`;
$listelement =~ s/\n/,/g;
$status = `echo $listelement > $list_add`;
$status = system("clearprompt list -outfile $choosed -dfile $list_add -choices -prompt \"Choose element(s) to put over version control : \" -prefer_gui");
if ($status != 0)
{
# printf("\n Aborting ...\n");
clean_file();
exit $status;
}
#
$listtoadd = `type $choosed`;
$listtoadd =~ s/\n//g;
printf("\n cleardlg /addtosrc $listtoadd");
$status = system("cleardlg /addtosrc $listtoadd");
clean_file();
exit $status;
}
else
{
# printf("\n No files founded...\n");
clean_file();
exit $status;
}
# End of Perl section
__END__
:endofperl

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Instructions for International Applicants and Applicants with International Credentials to GMU

I was looking for a list of credential evaluation services accepted by GMU. This doc lists four of them:
American Association of Collegiate
Registrars and Admissions Officers

One Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 520
Washington, DC 20036-1135
Phone: (202) 296-3359
Fax: (202) 872-8857
E-mail: info@aacrao.org
Web: www.aacrao.org

Educational Records Evaluation
Service Inc.

777 Campus Commons, Suite 200
Sacramento, CA 95825-8309
Phone: (916) 565-7475
Fax: (916) 565-7476
E-mail: edu@eres.com
Web: www.eres.com


The Foreign Educational
Document Service
P.O. Box 4091
Stockton, CA 95204
Phone: (209) 948-6589
(translation: Spanish only)

World Education Services Inc.
P.O. Box 745
Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113-0745
Phone: (800) 937-3895
Fax: (212) 966-6395
E-mail: info@wes.org
Web: www.wes.org


Monday, January 24, 2005

Nissan Xterra Owners Club

OBD scan tool

Transmeta gave up

Transmeta today announced that it will change its business model by March 31 of this year. Strategic changes include abando
ning the production of its processors and shifting its focus to licensing its technology to other companies.

It's a pity. It was a very interesting idea with code morphing technology. I always had my doubts in it, but hoped that they'll succeed.

I've read that it's somewhat similar to what Russian were doing with Elbrus super computers. Actually, they are still working on similar technologies in MCST Elbrus.
It's those guys who orginally worked on Elbrus super computers, led by Babayan. They claim that they developed microprocessor, which can run other processors byte-code more effectively that the originals. They mean Intel. Knowing how these sort of things were declared in Soviet Union, I have even stronger doubts than with Transmeta. Soviet scientists and engioneers used to claim all sorts of colls things, which nobody ever got to see in reality. It sounds incredible and there's no real thing yet. Suspicious...

As to Elbruses, I never saw them in my life. They had strange computer language called Okkam or Occam, no idea how it's spelled in English. The largest Soviet computer, with which I ever worked, was ES-1056 or 1066. We also had BESM-6 mainframes and SM-1800 mini-computers. ES - was a clone of IBM 360/370 series, SM - was a clone of PDP minis. BESM was ana original soviet design.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance by Emanuel Derman

Slashdot wrote about the book by a guy who used to be a physisist and became a mathematitian at Wall Street company. It must be interesting, definitely the one to read after I finish with DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

A quote with other books on topic:

The book recommended by the parent is an excellent practical discussion about exchange-traded options. It is not, however, "a good technical introduction to the techniques used for quantative analysis on Wall Street", being neither technical nor about derivative securities in general.

The standard recommendation is Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives by John Hull, and this is in fact a very good book and simultaneously a good introduction to many OTC derivatives. I like Paul Wilmott's book On Quantitative Finance. (This book comes in several versions, some longer and some shorter.)

The books mentioned above stress PDE-based analysis. If you would prefer an approach based on martingale theory, try Financial Calculus by Baxter and Rennie. An Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives by Neftci is a more elementary version; think of it as "Stochastic Calculus for Dummies." Neither of these two books contains much information about traded contracts.


Friday, January 14, 2005

HDD for Sun Ultra 1

I'm looking for a hard drive upgrade for my Sun Ultra 1. This post has some useful info.
> Ultra-1's generally have an 80-pin connector, not 68-pin, since the

> drives connect using the hot-swap brackets similar to the server line.
> I've bought 18GB Seagate drives and swapped them with no problem. The
> requirements are:
>
> a) 1" high, also called 1/3 height or low-profile, often Seagate
> model numbers ending in "LC"
> b) 80-pin connector which carries 68-pin SCSI as well as SCSI ID
> selector and power to the drive


> You should check your hard drive.  The original drives for Ultra1's

> were 80-pin, SCA hard drives NOT 68-pin hard drives.
>
> The ST39173WC will work as will the other WC drives. All of these have
> an 80-pin, SCA connector.
>
> eBay.com is a good place to "pick-up" SCA hard drives (new and used;
> Sun, Seagate, IBM, Fujitsu, etc.). My preference is Sun or Seagate.




Friday, January 07, 2005

All about Home recording

It's a strange web site with lots of info on home music recording. I've read a couple of articles. The writing style is not serious, they try to be funny and entertaining, but there may actually be some usefull bits.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Buffalotech gone crazy

It seems that Buffalotech decided to be more open to hackers. From this post I got the web site supposedly created by Buffalotech. It should be devoted to NAS build-yourself-kit thing.

Also, here you can find out how to get root access to LinkStation product, which I'm thinking to buy soon. It's an network attached storeage for home use.

Dan's gone

I wrote here about salsa classes at Clarendon grill in Arlington, VA.

Well, we went there with my friend yesterday to introduce him to the dance. Apparently, the old instructor, Dan, left the place. We didn't like a new instructor. He's more like a showman. The first lesson for my friend was almost useless. We ended up teaching himourselves. This new instructor talks to much off-topic and doesn't care about students, imho.

I don't know if I'm going to go there again. We met one of the guys who used to go with us to salsa classes in Fairfax. He advised to check out "lucky bar" on Connecticut ave. I've no idea what is it, but will definitely find out more info about it.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Dos Mukasan - Kaidasyn? (Where are you?)

I got a CD of legendary Kazakh group Dos Mukasan. They had huge hits in 70s. I asked Patrick to TAB one song, and he did it for me. Many thanks, Patrick! I tried to catch the lyrics myself. Words are in both Russian and Kazakh.

Lyrics
================================
Дос Мұқасан - Қайдасың.
--------------------------------

Күндіз де, түнде де сені іздедім.
Кімсің сен? Қайдасың? Соны білмедім.
Бірде барсың, бірде жоқ, сен бір _елесің_(?).
Түнімде таңымдай маған келесің.
Түнімде таңымдай маған келесің.

Днем и ночью я ищу давнюю мечту.
Но не зная кто она все равно ищу.
Ты приходишь как мираж в предрассветном сне,
Но я верю мое счастье улыбнется мне.
Но я верю мое счастье улыбнется мне.


Құс болып ұшалсам табармем әлде?
Сендей жан мен үшін жоқ бұл әлемде.
Сені іздедім далада. Сені іздедім қалада.
Жоқсың сен. Қайдасың? Жүрсің сен қайда?
Жоқсың сен. Қайдасың? Жүрсің сен қайда?

TABS
=================================
I transposed TABS a half note higher to adjust to Patrick's guitar tuning. All chords sound better barred.

1. Intro (solo 1) - I've to transpose Patrick's TAB for this.

2. Verse 1

(Cm) Күндіз де, (B-flat) түнде де (A-flat) сені ізде- (G) -дім.
(Cm) Кімсің сен? (B-flat) Қайдасың? (A-flat) Соны білме- (G) -дім.
(C) Бірде барсың, (Fm) бірде жоқ, (B-flat) сен бір _еле- (E-flat) -сің_(?).
(A-flat) Түнімде (Cm) таңымдай (G) маған келе - (Cm) -сің.
(Fm) Түнімде (Cm)таңымдай (G) маған келе - (Cm) -сің.

3. Solo 1

4. Verse 2

5. Solo 2 - I'll tab this later. I got the first part, but am too lazy to tab right now.

6. Verse 3

=====================
=====================

Translation.

I'll try to translate this into English. No rhymes yet, sorry.

Verse 1. (In Kazakh)

Days and nights I've been looking for you.
Who are you? where are you? I didn't know.
Sometimes you are here, sometimes you are not. You are _____ - [I couldn't get one word]
You come to me as dawn at night.
You come to me as dawn at night.

Verse 2. (In Russian)

Days and nights I'm looking for my old dream.
I don't know who she is, but still I'm looking for her.
You come as a mirage in my before-the-dawn dream,
but I believe that my happines will smile to me some day.
... but I believe that my happines will smile to me some day.

Verse 3 (In Kazakh)

If I could fly as a bird, would I be able to find you?
There's nobody like you in this world.
I've been looking for you in the praries. I've been looking for you in the city.
I couldn't find you. Where are you? Where are you wandering?
I couldn't find you. Where are you? Where are you wandering?

=========================

Wow! That was quite an achievement :) If you can correct lyrics or add more TABs, please, do it. I'd appreciate it very much.

Special thanks to Sairan Kikkarin. I used his beautiful KazWin Kazakh keyboard driver for Windows.

Friday, December 24, 2004

Silent PC review

a lot of resources on making pc quiet

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Portal comparison

I want to use portals

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Guitar TABs for beginners

Not too many songs, but good TAB;s and notes for beginners

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Derby tutorial, Nov 14, 9am by Jean Anderson

I'm on Derby presentation :)

Derby has functions written in Java.
Supports some Unicode, probably UTF-8.
Only one JVM connects to a database, there's db.lck file to prevent multi-JVM access.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Spring Application Framework

Finally, I've found time to look at this thing. I've been hearing about Spring for a year or so. It's a component framework.

I started porting my components in the current project to Spring. It's pretty flexible and doesn't require your components be aware of the Spring framework. One thing is missing: proper life cycle management. Spring manages life cycle only for single-ton components. It doesn't have it's own instance pools, unfortunately.

I'm going to look at its database and transactions stuff. It look interesting, maybe my home grown database layer could be ported to Spring.

Friday, September 24, 2004

Log4j + jUnit issue

When I put
BasicConfigurator.configure();
in setUp() method, then try to instanciate Log, it throws an exception. Solution is to add: -Dlog4j.ignoreTCL=true to JVM props. It worked for me with IDEA.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

You Don't Know Jack About VoIP

by Phil Sherburne and Cary Fitzgerald, Cisco

It's supposed to be a good overview of VoIP technology. I'm thinking about VoIP phone from SunRocket.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Find a class's runtime origin

"Back to your Class roots" by Vladimir Roubtsov explains how to find out class's archive, from where it was loaded.

I think I'll need it tomorrow :)

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Dancing on the River Terrace

Apparently, Kennedy center throwing a salsa party on Sept 17 at their reiver terrace.

Monday, September 06, 2004

ROADHOUSE BLUES guitar tabs

These tabs have guitar solo I was looking for. Also, they are a little different from other tabs of this song, more like ones from Patrick.

I also found tabs for "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top.

Unplugged Tabs

Seems to be all in one deal. Guitar tabs for all songs in Clapton's Unplugged.

Born Under A Bad Sign

It's guitar tabs for this beautiful Albert King's song.

Here's a few more:
from www.ultimate-guitar.com and from Tabworld.com.

I'm not sure which one's better, i.e. easier to me. Hey, I'm just a beginner!

Ah, here's lyrics.

I like this phrase "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all".

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Blues Alley

I've heard it's a good place for jazz and blues. It's in my list to go now.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

The horn was short :)

As we suggested on Friday, two mainstays of Windows Longhorn will be 'decoupled' from the 2006 release, with Microsoft dropping the WinFS storage and query system. Originally intended to be a full-blown replacement for the NTFS file system that put a database at the heart of Windows, WinFS will now be available as an add-on no sooner than 2007 for Longhorn, XP and Windows 2003. Or to be more precise - and here is another new piece of jargon for Redmond watchers - WinFS will be released as an "out-of-band add-on pack". Got that?


He-he :) Wasn't I telling my this to my friends long time ago? I doubt that this WinFS thing will ever be implemented at all. At least, in a way they were claiming.

Orion Cluster

This thing's interesting. I've always been interested in high performance computing (HPC). I wonder when these computers become more accessible in terms of prices.

The company is offering two models of its Cluster Workstations far faster than standard desktop computers. The first is a desktop model the size of a pizza delivery box with room for 12 computer processing chips.

Greg's MIDI and TAB

What I like about this site is that it has both TABS and MIDI sound tracks, so you can play along the accompanement. I was looking for Doors' Roadhouse Blues, and found this site.

I found many web site with tabs for that song, and surprisingly they all are the same. Absolutely identical. So, it seems people are copying. This particular version is a little different from the way I play it. Actually, imho, it's less convinient that the version, which was given to me by Patrick.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Tomcat 5 Unleashed by Lajos Moczar

I did technical editing of this book.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Expatica - for EU HR people

Some usefull stuff for all expatriates, but mostly for EU HR managers.

Friday, August 13, 2004

SO10 Explore Open Source Alternatives

Arnie's on our side! :) It's state of CA's open-source position, as I understand it.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The Golden Horde and the Formation of the Ethnic Kazakhs

This is a Kazakh guy from China, Jiger Janabel. HE's writing a doctoral thesis.

Amazon Warrior Women on PBS.ORG

I watched the whole show but didn't get the point :)

Davis-Kimball found 2,500 years old skeleton in the kurgan (ancient burial place). This one was in Russia near by Kazakh border. In Kazakhstan we have many such places.

So, the skeleton is supposedly of a warrior woman. Now researched found a blond Kazakh girl in Mongolia, took her and her mom's DNA, and compared it with the DNA of the remains. In the TV show they said they are identical. I know many Kazakh women who have caucasian look: blue eyes, blong hair etc. Devis-Kimball could come to Kazakhstan and easily find them. Also, they were showing modern nomads' clothes and other stuff and saying that it's similar to pictures from many hundred years B.C. on greek clay barrels. Man, I know these ornaments, they are all over in Kazakhstan, on rugs, nomad huses etc :) In fact that nomad house they've shown is identical to those I've been in Kazakhstan. You can buy one for about 15-20 grands. I can arrange it, if you wish.

Then comes Herodotus' story about Amazon women who ended up in northern Black Sea shores and mariied with scythians. Well, we, Kazakhs, kinda think that Scythians were
our ancestors. So, basically, the bones belong to these people, and I'm not surprised that DNA of Kazakhs and theirs is identical. I'm pretty much sure that my DNA would match too, no need to travel that far to western Mongolia. Also, I've heard stories about ancient Kazakh women who cut their right breasts, because it was better for archery, or something like that.

Now how does it connect to Amazon warrior women? I've no clue :) I guess these amazons were Kazakh women. I'm not surprised at all.

Here's her book called Warrior Women and an article Ancient Graves of Warrior Women Offer Hints of Amazons.

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

VA scraps pilot computer system in Fla. hospital

This pilot cost them almost half a billion dollars!


An agency spokesman said he could not say whether any money spent on the failed system would be recovered. The total project was to have cost $472 million.


This is outrageous.

Resign Patterns by Michael Duell

It's a funny parody to Design Patterns by GoF.


2.5 Fromage

The Fromage Pattern is often full of holes. Fromage consists of cheesy little software tricks that make portability impossible. The older this pattern gets, the riper it smells.


You have to be familiar with whole Design Pattern thing and have some experience in software development in order to understand humour, I guess.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

KSP Ottawa

Russian speaking bards love to gather every year. It must be quite an entertainment. This one is in Ottawa, CA

Sunday, July 11, 2004

http://expat.nursat.kz/

This ia web site for expatriots in Almaty. I found it usefull.

Friday, July 09, 2004

Introduction to Mobility Java Technology

Links for those who want to start Java mobile development.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Steve's choice of mid files

Nice selection of midi files

My T610

One more usefull site for Sony Ericsson T610 phone users.

Unofficial Sony Ericsson Club

O'Reilly's review of the phone with useful links

Sony Ericsson Developer site has a lot of tech information on hardware and Java programming.

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

HTML output of JSF tags

Interesting page shows what you get from various JSF tags in HTML page. I'm going to port one app from Struts to JSF

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Explore Wi-Fi around

Interesting tool for wi-fi setup and monitoring. I didn't use it myself.

Friday, June 11, 2004

Struts RequestProcessor override...

Thanks to this guy, he saved me some time. Struts folks don't explain how to override RequestProcessor in their docs.

Monday, June 07, 2004

Digital Photography Composition Tips

Microsoft discussed merger with SAP

Hmm... toothless anti-trust regulators didn't teach them anything.

Redmond software giant Microsoft Corp. said Monday that it initiated preliminary discussions last year regarding a merger with German business software firm SAP AG. Those discussions ended "a few months ago due to the complexity of the potential transaction and subsequent integration," Microsoft said. "There are no intentions to resume these talks."

Friday, June 04, 2004

Breakfast with Venus

On the morning of 8th June the planet Venus will pass between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a black circle drifting across the face of the Sun.
Only six of these transits have ever been observed - the first in 1639 and the most recent in 1882. No-one alive today has ever seen a transit of Venus.

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

Standard Container Benchmark

This is an interesting work related to one of my recent works.

Travel/Visitor insurance guide

One more link G1G

Monday, May 31, 2004

Samizdat - a Noble Word with a Touching History

It's funny to look at things you've experienced from someone else's point of view. Now "samizdat" is a noble word. Try telling it to RIAA or MPAA :)

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

http://www.stanford.edu/~jstockdl/tmp/usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

I found this article on Slashdot about 4km WiFi Range w/ $5 DIY Antenna. I've to try this someday. I like this sort of things.

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Bull Run Shooting center

I haven't ever been there, but want to try.

Some more links to explore:
http://www.fxrgc.org/
http://www.vaskeet.com/vssa/mod.php?mod=userpage&menu=1005&page_id=16

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Evanscence - Fallen

I bought album Fallen at AllOfMp3. What can I say? I liked it. I've heard their first song in Daredevil movie, then some other songs on FM. Later they performed at an award show, maybe Oscar. I was impressed.

I like the album, and listened it several times already. It's so called "gothic rock" style. I've no clue what does this mean :)

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

jBoss's Fleury astroturfing?

quote: "According to sources and published reports, JBoss employees, including Fleury, the chief executive of the so-called "professional open source" company, posted messages to popular Java sites such as TheServerSide and JavaLobby under anonymous or bogus names."

Somehow, I'm not surprised. I was on Marc's presentation at NoVAJUG. It was very entertaining, but I could hardly agree with some of his points. He seemed intentioanlly heating up the controversies, much like Mr. Moore :)

Friday, May 14, 2004

Yahoo Boosts E-Mail Storage

Not bad at all. I'm struggling to keep my mailbox under 6MB and was considering to switch to Gmail.

Yahoo promises 100MB for free accounts. I'm very unhappy with their Spam service. It doesn't recognize spam at all recently. Even Cox's spam filter is much better. Also, Gmail has a different approach to e-mail, it's not just 1GB limit. They come from the search perspective and it looks interesting.

Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Finally, we went to see the movie. I liked it. It's in "tarantino" style, and very different from Vol.1.

Monday, May 10, 2004

H2O

It's a night club in SW, Washington, DC on the waterfront. It's a huge one level building with several section playing different music. I think that it's a restaurant in daytime. The night we went there, they were playing hip-hop/raggae in two sections, salsa and european trans/house in other two sections. There was a live band in salsa room and an acrobatic performance (two guys and a girl). European DJ was playing that techno house whatever "music" pretty well. There's a porch on waterfront. Overall, it was not bad.

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

xReporter

I started evaluation of this project. The installation instructions are taylored for MySQL database. I need to make this work with Sybase. So, I'll throw in my modifications here.

First, Start with a new configuration has a table creation script, which must be modified. The reason is that "role" and "function" are keywords in Sybase, and they are used as column names in the script. Here's the corrected script:

----------------------

Now, when change /sarconfig/config.xml so to replace "role" and "function" column names with "role1" and "function" in order to comply with above script.
IF OBJECT_ID('users') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE users
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('roles') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE roles
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('authcodes') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE authcodes
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('customers') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE customers
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('userprops') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE userprops
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('accesscontrol') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE accesscontrol
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('userentrystore') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE userentrystore
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('reportstore') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE reportstore
END
go

IF OBJECT_ID('reportstore_detail') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE reportstore_detail
END
go

create table users (
username varchar(50) primary key,
password varchar(50) not null
)
go

create table roles(
username varchar(50) not null,
role1 varchar(20) not null
)
go
create index roles_username_idx on roles (username)

create table authcodes (
username varchar(50) primary key,
authcode varchar(20) not null
)
go

create table customers (
username varchar(50) primary key,
customer varchar(50) not null
)
go

create table userprops (
username varchar(50) not null,
propname varchar(50) not null,
propvalue varchar(255) not null,
primary key(username, propname)
)
go

create table accesscontrol(
report_id varchar(50),
user_role varchar(50)
)
go

create index ac_reportid_idx on accesscontrol (report_id)
create index ac_userrole_idx on accesscontrol (user_role)

insert into users values('jef', 'bigsecret')
insert into customers values('jef','jeftechnologies')
insert into roles values('jef', 'chief')
insert into authcodes values('jef', 'sample-auth-code')
insert into accesscontrol values('firstreport', 'chief')

create table userentrystore (
username varchar(50) not null,
storage_id varchar(50) not null,
function1 varchar(10) not null,
sequence numeric(5) not null,
type varchar(10) not null,
value varchar(255) not null,
primary key(username, storage_id, function1, sequence)
)

create table reportstore (
id VARCHAR(50) not null,
username VARCHAR(50) not null,
name VARCHAR(255) not null,
datasource_id VARCHAR(255) not null,
reportdef_id VARCHAR(255) not null,
primary key (id),
unique (name, username)
)

create index rs_name_idx on reportstore (name)
create index rs_username_idx on reportstore (username)

create table reportstore_detail (
id VARCHAR(50) not null,
function1 VARCHAR(15) not null,
name VARCHAR(255) not null,
value VARCHAR(255) not null,
primary key(id, function1, name)
)
--------------------

Now, we have to modify /sarconf/config.xml accordingly, i.e. replace "role" and "function" column references with "role1" and "function1".

Next thing to do is to change connection properties in config.xml and datasources. I have an earlier blog entry on setting up Sybase connections.

If you want to call stored procedures, which return result sets, then the trick is to replace query strings like "select f1, f2 from t1" with something like "exec sp1". Where sp1 could be:
-------------
CREATE PROCEDURE sp1
AS
BEGIN
select f1, f2 from t1
END
-------------
Sybase JDBC driver will treat this as a "select ..." query. Parameters are apssed in xReporter in the same way as in the query. I'm using stored procedures extensively, so I'm glad this works.

Cheers!

Tomcat Unleashed

I finished tech editing the upcoming book on Tomcat servlet container. It's due this July. Writing and editing took more time than I thought it would. I'll probably get some chapters back after author's review, but the major work's done. Good. It's such a relief.

I think it's going to be a good book. I liked Lajos Moczar's hands-on approach to the subject with many interesting samples. I was also impressed with his knowledge of Tomcat.

Monday, May 03, 2004

Generics in C# and Java

Finally, I've some time to refresh my recent work on data abstraction penalty. Java and C# are going to add generic programming features, so it's time to update my study on data abstraction penalties of these languages. Here are some links on C# generics:
An Introduction to C# Generics by Juval Lowy
The C# Design Process: A Conversation with Anders Hejlsberg
More on Generics in the CLR by Jason Clark





The Joint Service Open House at Andrews AFB

We've been there once and liked the show. See you there.

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Great Falls Park, VA

We've been there before. Today we went for our first picnic with fellow kazakhs living in DC metro area.

The weather forecast wasn't very good, but actual weather was. At least, until we stayed there.

It's a nice place with a little but beautiful waterfall. There's a picnic area with approximately 50 tables and 17 grills. We came early at 11am. It's a good idea to come before it gets crowder afternoon.